OHL Alumni Central

Mike Looby played five seasons in the Ontario Hockey League from 2001-02 to 2005-06. He began his OHL career with the Brampton Battalion and called the Bunker home for two seasons. Looby spent the 2003-04 season with the Sault Ste. Marie Greyhounds before heading to the Plymouth Whalers for the 2004-05 season. He split his final year between the Whalers and the Kingston Frontenacs.

After an early exit by the Frontenacs in Mike’s final OHL season (losing in the first round to the Sudbury Wolves in six games), it was off to the Central Hockey League’s Laredo Bucks. The Bucks won the CHL championship in 2005-06 and Looby played in 12 of the team’s playoff games, contributing a goal and two assists from the blue line.

Undrafted by an NHL club, Mike has spent most of his professional hockey career in the Central Hockey League. The exception was 2008-09 when he played in the East Coast Hockey League, split between the Dayton Bombers and the Gwinnett Gladiators. This past season, Mike played 54 games on the point for the CHL’s Wichita Thunder after starting the season with two games played for the Queen City Storm of the All-American Hockey League.

2011-12 brings about a major change in landscape for Looby. Mike will cross the Atlantic and play for Eaters Geleen in the Netherlands. This past season, Geleen finished sixth in the nine team Dutch elite league.

Ontario Hockey League grad Marc Lefebvre began the 2010-11 season with the Zoetermeer Panthers in the Eredivisie, the elite hockey league of the Netherlands. The team went bankrupt after 12 games and Lefebvre was shifted to Eaters Geleen in the now eight team league.

Marc Lefebvre with the Elmira Jackals during the 2006-07 season.

Lefebvre played three seasons in the Ontario Hockey League from 1999-00 to 2001-02. He played his first two seasons with the Ottawa 67′s and his final season was played in a Sarnia Sting jersey.

Undrafted by an NHL club, Marc made his way to Europe for the first time in the 2003-04 season, playing for the Sheffield Steelers of Great Britain’s EIHL. The team was regular season and playoff champion that season. Lefebvre played two seasons with Sheffield, one with the Coventry Blaze in 2005-06 and a season with the Edinburgh Capitals this past season.

Lefebvre played a season in France’s Ligue Magnus in 2007-08 with Epinal. His year in France was flanked by a season in the UHL with the Elmira Jackals and a season in the Southern Professional Hockey League (SPHL) with the Twin Cities Cyclones.

With the ill-fated Zoetermeer Panthers, Marc wore the ‘A’ on his jersey and was clipping along at nearly a point per game pace. He continued to produce points with Eaters Geleen (sometimes called the Smoke Eaters) and the team finished sixth in the regular season. Geleen is currently battling it out in the Eredivisie semi-finals.

Teammate on Eaters Geleen and Ontario Hockey League grad, Brad Smulders, was previously featured at OHL Alumni Central.

Check out Marc Lefebvre’s profile page at the Eaters Geleen Official Website.

At the start of March, we did a post on Ontario Hockey League alumni playing in the Australian Ice Hockey League (click here to view post). One of the players was Brad Smulders and we’d just like to add an update on this former Sarnia Sting.

Brad is signed on for the 2010 season with the Gold Coast Blue Tongues of the AIHL. The season starts in about 4 weeks, in time for the Australian winter. Last season, Brad was the league’s scoring champion with a remarkable 3.5 points per game. Expectations are no less for the upcoming season.

Brad has just finished up the winter season in the Netherlands with Romijnders Devils Nijmegen. Not the leading scorer in this league. In fact, Brad was 5th in team scoring but still was slightly over a point a game in a higher calibre league with more than twice the number of games on the schedule.

The team was the best during the regular season and just recently won the playoff championships with a sweep over Destil Trapper Tilburg.

As mentioned in the previous post, Brad only played 17 games over his OHL career. This still makes him a product of the league and a true measure of how far reaching the OHL is in the hockey world.

To view Brad Smulders profile page on the Devils official website, click here.

To check out the Gold Coast Blue Tongues roster page, click here.

David Cornacchia played in the Ontario Hockey League from 1997-98 to 2000-01. He started his career with the Sudbury Wolves and was traded to the Sarnia Sting in 1998-99. The next season, 1999-00, David was traded from the Sting to the Belleville Bulls where he finished out his OHL career.

Cornacchia has fallen off the face of the hockey world, according to hockeydb.com. However, we’ve tracked him down playing in the Netherlands for Destil Trappers Tilburg (Tilburg Trappers). In the Dutch league, David is a point per game defenceman on a team that is in the top three of an eight team league.

Along the way, David has had stints in the ECHL, AHL, CHL, Germany’s DEL and Austria’s Erste Bank Eishockey Liga. The journey from the OHL to the Dutch league placed him on 10 different teams in 4 countries.

To view David Cornacchia’s profile page on the Tilburg Trappers official website, click here. The site is in Dutch, but, as we’ve said before, hockey on the internet is pretty universal. If you need help with a translation, you can always try Google Translate (just google it). There will be a Dutch language guide coming out on OHL Alumni Central. Currently there is just a German one with more to come.